


Level up

by neoncity



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Light-Hearted, Post-Canon, Rated T for swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29179473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neoncity/pseuds/neoncity
Summary: It was horrible.It was great.It looked like he'd just murdered someone.Yuri snapped a picture of himself in the mirror and sent it to Otabek.Otabek: what the fuckOtabek: I could do a better job than that blindfoldedYuri: thanks for the support(Yuri dyes his hair, and the skating community soon follows his lead)
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri & Victor Nikiforov & Yuri Plisetsky, Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 7
Kudos: 76
Collections: Yuri!!! on Ice Remix Challenge 2021





	Level up

**Author's Note:**

> Betad by [Orange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EatingOranges143)

The first time Yuri Plisetsky dyed his hair it was 2 am, he was having an existential crisis, and the dye was a discounted bottle of cheap dye he'd picked off the supermarket shelf on a whim, whose color he couldn't even remember.

  
It turned out to be red, he mused to himself later that night (morning??). The ends of his blond hair were dyed an erratic crimson, with occasional streaks that went up to his hairline.

  
It was horrible. 

It was great. 

It looked like he'd just murdered someone.

  
Yuri snapped a picture of himself in the mirror and sent it to Otabek before going to bed.

  
After last year's Grand Prix, Yuuri and Viktor had moved to Saint Petersburg so that Viktor could train under Yakov again, while still coaching Yuuri. Competing and coaching at the same time was a death wish as far as Yuri and everyone else was concerned, but Viktor was Viktor, and once he'd made up his mind it was hard to stop him. 

  
However, having Viktor back meant that when Yuri walked into the rink the next morning, he got to witness the glorious, historical moment of watching Viktor Nikiforov flub a jump in front of him. 

Yuri commit the moment to memory, seeing Viktor’s face set in concentration before catching a glimpse at Yuri coming in, and all that concentration being replaced by surprise as he missed his landing and crashed onto the ice.

  
The rink was dead quiet.

  
"Yurio," Viktor yelled, staggering to his feet. "What did you do to your hair?"

  
Yuuri, Mila, and Georgi just stared. Yuri smirked at them.

"What does it look like?"

  
"YURA!" Yakov stormed over. "What is the meaning of this??"

  
Yuri rolled his eyes at him and dropped his bag on the floor. "I just got here, give me some room to breathe"

  
Yakov's face was turning red and purple and Yuri caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass behind him. Oh yea, that looked horrific.

  
Oh well, Yakov wasn't his grandfather, he couldn't tell him anything about it. He was there to coach him on skating, not yell at him about his life choices.

  
Or so one would think, Yuri thought, blocking out the man's angry yelling.

  
Lilia Baranovskaya looked him over, lips pressed in distaste. "What matters is how he skates." she announced. "However, we must remediate before any competition, this is disgraceful."

  
Yuri finished warming up and laced up his skates, finally turning back and regarding Yakov. 

"Well? Are you going to train me or not?"

  
That was the end of the discussion for the day.

  
Otabek: what the fuck

Otabek: I could do a better job than that blindfolded

Yuri: thanks for the support

  
By some stroke of miracle, the dye Yuri had picked up was non-permanent, and with the help of a two-hour-long shower of vigorously scrubbing at his hair, it washed away in just over a week, leaving a light pink stain.

  
Yakov thanked whatever gods were out there for having mercy on him and not having to drag his disobedient charge to a hairdresser by the ears.

  
Yakov may have been too hasty with that, as Yuri was far from done.

___

  
When Yuuri returned home from shopping one late afternoon, he didn't expect to find Yuri sitting in his living room, scrolling through his phone, while Viktor applied what looked to Yuuri's entire aluminum foil roll to his hair.

  
"What's going on?" Yuuri called.

  
"Teenager rebellion!" Viktor said excitedly.

  
Yuuri looked at the bowl of dye on the floor, the hair dye bottle laying discarded on the ground, and the plastic mat they were both sitting on, to protect the carpet, he presumed.

"Wasn't your exhibition skate enough?"

  
Yuri shrugged.

  
Yuuri set the bag of groceries on the kitchen table and watched as Viktor carefully applied a bright teal dye to Yuri's hair. He hadn't known his husband knew how to dye hair. Sure, his platinum silver hair was dyed, but Viktor had struck Yuuri as someone who would go to a saloon to do that sort of thing. 

  
"You chose a nice color," Yuuri observed. "It brings out your eyes" 

  
Yuri hummed in response.

  
His normally chipper husband was surprisingly concentrated as he carefully sectioned off another piece of Yuri's hair, something Yuuri had only ever seen in his skating.

  
"Though I have to say, I'm surprised you trust Viktor to let him dye your hair," Yuuri added.

  
"I don't like strangers putting their hands in my hair," Yuri groused. "and Vitya does good ombres."

  
Viktor beamed. "Thank you"

  
"Does he now?" Yuuri asked, interested.

  
It turned out, there had been a period during the off-season a couple of years ago in which Viktor had been dying his hair different colors every two weeks. 

  
"I thought Yakov was going to have a heart attack," Viktor said wickedly.

  
Yuri held up his phone. "I still have pics, wanna see?"

  
"You do?" Viktor tried unsuccessfully to peer over Yuri's shoulder. 

  
Yuri laughed to himself quietly. "I even have a few of the disaster with the black dye."

  
Viktor paled. "You're not showing him that"

  
"Oh yea? Try to stop me."

  
"Yuratchka Plisetsky those are bold words to say to someone who is currently dying your own hair-"

  
"Oh you wouldn't dare-"

  
Yuuri smiled at their bickering. "Are you staying for dinner"?

  
___

  
Yuuri served dinner just as Viktor finished washing and drying Yuri’s hair. 

  
Yuri was right, Viktor did good ombres. 

The upper half of his head was still blond, slowly transitioning to a bright teal.

They talked as they ate, about skating and the upcoming season, about their fellow rink mates, and so on.

  
Yuri helped Viktor and Yuuri clear the table and wash the dishes, then they settled in the living room, Viktor pestering Yuri into letting him braid his hair until he relented.

  
Yuuri lay down on the carpet next to them, shielding his eyes from the brightness of the lamp overhead, and closed his eyes.

  
“Didn’t you say you were going to bake brownies?” Viktor asked at one point. Yuri perked up at that.

  
Without getting up, Yuuri pointed in the general direction of the pitiful shred of aluminum foil that had survived the ordeal.

Viktor still looked confused, so he said.

“Oh yes, let me make brownies. I'll line the pan with aluminum foil I certainly have.”

  
Viktor groaned. “Sorry”

  
Yuuri laughed. “It’s fine. Besides, you make better brownies than me. ”

  
___

  
"That was fun," Viktor remarked after Yuri left. "Makes me want to dye my hair something weird"

  
"Should I be worried?"

  
"Nahh"

  
__

  
When Yuri showed up to the rink the next day, Yakov stared at him for a minute straight then proceeded to ignore the fact he'd dyed his hair completely, barking orders.

  
A picture of him with his new hair made it onto the internet, and his angels went wild. Yuri blamed Viktor.

  
It actually wasn't a bad shot. He was shown from the shoulders up, leaning against the barrier of the ice rink with his elbows. His hair was half tied up, and he was staring off into the distance, lost in thought.

  
Better this than the red dye, that was for sure.

  
There were speculations about why he'd decided to dye his hair, why this color, how good he looked, taking the internet, or well, the part of it that cared about skating in a landslide. 

  
"Your feral fans are going feral", Viktor informed him, as if he didn't already know, and wasn't responsible for it.

  
"Yea, thanks to you."

  
Viktor smiled sheepishly but didn't deny it. 

  
He asked Viktor to send him the rest of the pictures he'd taken of him, and promptly received nearly a dozen notifications.

  
There was one of him sitting in Viktor and Yuuri's kitchen that caught his eye in particular. Soft warm lighting and a semi blurred background, his hair half up half down and braided into a crown after Yuri had relented at Viktors insisting.

  
He uploaded that one to his already frenzied Instagram and scrolled through the rest. There were some of him at the rink, along with a few from after dinner, Viktor and Yuri both in the shot. That meant there were two culprits, not one.

  
"I'm going to kill Katsudon," Yuri announced.

  
"Aw, he just thought you looked cute. Little kitten's first time with decently dyed hair." 

Viktor winked at him, and Yuri hastily finished tying the laces of his skates and took off after him. 

  
Yakov yelled at them to stop chasing each other around the rink and if they had that much energy he could cut down their break time. 

  
__

  
Yuri got his revenge when Viktor showed up not too long after with a bright pink streak in his hair, grinning madly. Yuuri shook his head at his husband fondly.

  
"You're too old for that," Yakov told him. 

  
"That's what they said to me about skating too, and I'm still here am I not?"

He pulled off a spectacular triple salchow to prove his point.

  
Yuri snapped a picture of Viktor at what had to be the worst possible angle and uploaded that to his Instagram story. 

  
The internet loved it.

  
Yuri scrolled through Instagram while on a lunch break with Viktor and Yuuri, his bewilderment growing.

A skating fan page reposted the pic with the caption "aww, Viktor and Yuri decided to dye their hair together! That's so cute, they're like siblings. And we get to see Viktor's goofy side!

  
There was a lot to unpack in that. Siblings?? Goofy side too?? Too???

  
Yuuri told him people thought Viktor was charming.

  
Yuri knew that. The question was how had he managed to keep up that pretense for so long?

  
Viktor offendedly told them he was charming, then fell out of his chair when the waitress startled him as she swung by to pick up their orders.

  
Yuri took another picture with half a mind to start a Viktor blackmail folder.

  
Otabek: You look great. I am surprised your coach was fine with that though

Yuri: oh he wasn't

Otabek: lmao nice

  
Yakov warmed up to it eventually, though he didn’t say it. He got a stylist to design a costume for Yuri’s upcoming season of black and silver fabric, with teal accents.

  
They sure were a trio on the podium of the Russian nationals that year, Yuri with his teal, Viktor’s pink, and Georgi who, well, was Georgi. His make up made up for the lack of dyed hair.

  
When the teal finally started to wash out, Yuri already had a new color in mind.

  
Viktor had lots of fun messing with the purples and pinks and oranges of the dye Yuri had chosen, blending them to a sunset ombré. 

  
"You owe me two rolls of aluminum foil," Yuuri told Yuri. 

  
__

  
Yuri posted a new picture of himself and muted his Instagram notifications. 

  
"Yura" Viktor announced the next time he saw him. "You have done a glorious thing. Chris is tired of seeing people continuously talk about you and wants to one up you"

  
"Tell him he's on"

  
Chris showed up at Worlds with bright green hair. Not wanting to be left out, JJ went purple

Between him, Yuri and Viktor, the commentators were having a field day.

  
All their coaches went out drinking together.

  
“Hair color craze sweeps the skating world by storm” made the headline that week.

  
Green? Yuri could rock green. 

  
Otabek: are you trying to run through the whole rainbow 

Yuri: maybe

Otabek: nice

  
“Your angels are trying to guess what color you're going to do next,” Viktor told him. “I propose going full black for shock value” 

  
Yuri looked at him suspiciously. “That’s a horrible idea”

  
“At least consider it”

  
Viktor was up to something and Yuuri didn’t trust him. “No”

  
“You gotta surprise people,” Viktor called after him. “That’s how you win, don’t you want to win?”

  
Yuri edged away from him. 

__

  
Viktor: alternatively, do you think Yuuri would look good with blue hair?

Viktor: Yuuuriiiii answer me

__

  
Yuri: your husband is trying to recruit me to be part of a multi-level marketing selling hair dye and I think you’re next watch out

Yuuri: What???? 

__

  
Otabek: what color are you going to do next

Yuri: Viktor proposed black

Otabek: do it 

Yuri: I'll go black if you go blonde

  
Thankfully for both of them, Otabek kindly declined. 

  
Yuri: you should dye yours too though

Otabek: no

Yuri: next time we're assigned to the same competition you better sleep with one eye open

  
___

  
Otabek: my hair is BLACK Yura

Otabek: bleach and I do not see eye to eye

Yuri: coward

  
__

  
"This is why I love them. Kings of sportsmanship but dying hair? It's war" was a sentiment shared by a lot of fans.

  
There were bets going on for who would dye their hair next.

  
Some hardcore fans had even started dying streaks of their own hair in support.

  
But eventually, the craze died down, and things returned pretty much to normal. 

  
Until Viktor posted a picture of himself with a beaming Yuuri absolutely rocking blue hair.

And goddammit.

  
Yuri wasn't going to let Katsudon beat him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not super happy with this, but I lost interest in writing it so I posted it as is.


End file.
